THE JEWS OF
Chapter one (pp. 9-32)
In:
TWO PORTUGUESE EXILES
IN
DOM DAVID NEGRO AND
DOM ISAAC ABRAVANEL
By
ELIAS LIPINER
Translated from Portuguese by
Menahem
Pariente
THE MAGNES PRESS, THE
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תרגום ועיבוד
הפרק הראשון (עמ' 9-32) בשם: יהודי-פורטוגל: סקירה
מתוך הספר: שני
גולים-פורטוגליים בקשטיליה דום דוד נֶגרו
ודום יצחק אברבנאל
מאת אליאס ליפינר
[*] תורגם מאנגלית,
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reserved to Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1997
CHAPTER ONE
THE JEWS OF
The
present book describes two important but separate episodes concerning the
participation of two Jewish courtiers in the political life of the
Tempo dos Judeus (The Jewish Period)
To
sum up what is known about the origins of the Jews in
Lucio de Azevedo rejects the historical value of such
traditions "by means of which, since the 14th century, the persecuted Jews
claimed the right to live in the land which their ancestors had for so many
years inhabited." Having made this insinuation under the influence of
subtle anti-Jewish prejudices, the author nevertheless admits as certain
"that the date of their arrival is extremely old and precedes any
memories, traditions, or monuments existing in ancient
Because of the original unity of the history and geography
of the Iberian Peninsula, the existence of Jewish communities in
Dom Yahya ibn Yahya (or ibn Ya'ish) may have collaborated with the first Portuguese monarch (or with his father, D. Henrique de Borgonha) in the conquest of new territories, in order to expand the kingdom. It was said that D. Yahya, founder the famous Ibn Yahya family, was descended from the royal house of David. The old Jewish chronicles relate that, as a reward for services rendered, he was granted by the Portuguese monarch the manor of Unhos, Frielas, and Aldeia dos Negros,[4] and a coat of arms which was used by his descendants who, in the centuries that followed, distinguished themselves as scholars, high officers of the kingdom, and leaders of the Jewish community of Portugal.[5]
Alexandre Herculano states that the Jews "had been
preponderant since the first centuries of the monarchy" and that
"probably nowhere in Europe during the Middle Ages, had public authority
favoured the Jewish race so much as in
In fact, the sections of the Ordenações Afonsinas referring to the Jews encompass more than stern legal regulations. They also include the history and drama of the Jews in the Portuguese Middle Ages. From the moment at nightfall that the bells of the churches announced the prayer of Hail Mary (Ave Maria), the Jews could not risk taking a step outside the judarias (or judiarias), which were guarded by the king's sentries. Moreover, these sections reveal the desperate fight by the Jews to get rid of these and other serious restrictions to their freedom, which turned them into an undesirable group at the margin of society.
It should be noted that when the restrictive regulations concerning the Jews of the kingdom were translated into everyday reality, they do not seem to have worked properly. Therefore we see in the Ordenações of the 15th century frequent references to unobserved laws and their subsequent reiteration and adaptation to the new realities – all this pointing to the fact that the strict regulations were not always observed. Very soon the monarchs realized the injustice of their own ordinances or at least the impossibility of their strict implementation. Whether because the Jews in self-defence, or in revenge for wrongful treatment received, tried to evade the ordinances by means of subterfuges; or because of political and administrative interests deriving from the Crown itself, the monarchs were compelled to mitigate the strictness of their ordinances. In certain cases it was done to facilitate the collection of taxes from the Jewish community, in others because they needed the intellectual cooperation of the Jews.
Nothing better defines this ambivalent attitude of the
kings of
Contemporary documents and chronicles report a large number of cases in which certain Jews were granted special privileges that contradicted the ordinances.
By a law of D. Duarte, confirmed by D. Afonso V, it was
forbidden for the Jews to have Christian servants. However, King D. Afonso
himself, in a letter dated July 12, 1480, authorized the Jew D. Judah Negro to
employ on his farm a Christian man as farm manager. It is known that the same
king exempted many Jews from wearing the badge that they had to wear on their
clothes and which distinguished them in a shameful manner from the rest of the
population. In the same way, in spite of the strict laws compelling the Jews to
live inside judarias, some continued to reside in different places among
the Christians. Using widely different excuses, the kings granted many Jews
special licenses to enable them to live outside the ghettos. Some ordinances
adopted the same double standards and self-seeking generosity. Paradoxically
and surprisingly, the text of these ordinances gives at first glance the weird
albeit incorrect impression that the law tended to compel the Jews, under
severe punishments indicated in the ordinances, strictly to observe their own
mosaic faith. This trend appears in several passages of the Codigo Afonsino:
by stating that the cattle to be consumed by the Jews were to be slaughtered by
the community slaughterer according to Jewish religious laws (titulo
LXXIV) and by demanding the employment of Jewish learned persons and chaplains
to increase the religious life of the community (titulo LXXXI); by
threatening with prison any Jew who would appear in court on the sabado
(Saturday) or on other holy days of his own religion (titulo XC), and
forbidding the Jews under certain circumstances to drink wine that had not been
prepared according to the laws of their religion (titulo XCI). The real
reason for these measures was the desire to prevent, whenever possible, conversação
(contact) between Christians and Jews. To this should be added, in the case of
ritual slaughtering, the intention to supervise the quantities of meat consumed
by the Jews in order to ensure that no part of the meat evaded the duties due
to the Crown. But whatever the reasons that determined the privileges received,
the Jews depended on them to survive. Located in the lower echelons of the
contemporary social hierarchy and rejected by medieval society for reasons that
were apparently religious, the Jews were always subject to the protection of
the mighty of the Christian nations. Barros defined that fatal dependence when
he wrote about the Jews of India: "Wherever they live, they always look
for the shadow or favour of the princes, for the people are wary of them."[8]
Barros never visited
Evidently this protection, within the medieval conception and with few exceptions, was granted to the Jews individually or in certain cases even collectively not because of a humanitarian spirit or social justice but because the Jews as a group were considered the property of the king, who felt entitled to enjoy their riches and talents. Therefore the Jews deserved the king's protection always by grace and mercy and not by right.
Seen from this point of view, the Jews were considered good merchandise from the earliest times, when documents were written both in Latin and in Portuguese. In fact, in a royal order dated December 7, 1210 and written in Latin, D. Afonso II referred to his Jewish subjects as Judei mei, whereas an individual Jew was called meo Judeo.[9] At a later date D. Diniz called them, now in the vernacular, os meus Judeus (my Jews) when granting them a letter of protection.[10] At the beginning or end of such privileges the following sentence was invariably repeated: "And I wishing to grant them grace and mercy."
From the beginning of the monarchy, the Jews left the remains of their presence and their historical memories scattered all over the kingdom. The Ordenações Afonsinas, all belonging to the same medieval period, reflect the political and religious thinking that governed the relations between Jews and Portuguese at the time. The regulations formed the framework for several aspects of the day-today life of the Jews in the kingdom during this period. Although the picture depicted in these ordinances is narrow, it does show the socio-economical and religious profile of this ethnic group, as privileged as it was humiliated, in its historical greatness and in its daily ostracism, always subject to the will and whims of the king, the highest personification of the law at the time.
If, as we have seen before, the kings of Portugal
sometimes changed the ordinances, in order to mitigate their strictness, in
favour of individual Jews, on other occasions they did the opposite in order to
harm the same beneficiaries as a group. Thus, in spite of the fact that one of
the ordinances clearly forbade disturbing the Jews and disrupting their feasts
and religious ceremonies and specifically prohibited their forced baptism to
Christianity, the kings of
It appears from the legislation collected in Livro II of the Codigo Afonsino,[11] which applied especially to the Jews, as well as from subsidiary sources, that the Portuguese Jews were organized in corporations called comunas which were governed by the Arrabi-Mor (Chief Rabbi), who had supreme authority in the whole kingdom, and by Arrabis menores (lower judges) as local magistrates. The Arrabi-Mor was appointed by the king, whereas the Arrabis menores were elected by the members of the community themselves. The Arrabi-Mor appointed seven ouvidores (magistrates), with jurisdiction in the seven districts into which the kingdom was then divided, to help him administer justice to their fellow Jews. Apart from administering justice, the Arrabi-Mor was also in charge of protecting the Jews under his jurisdiction against local hostility. There were periods during which the Portuguese Jews had little recourse against persecution, but also enjoyed periods of clear horizons, especially when they could employ the powerful weapon of intervention and protection by using the influence of the Arrabi-Mor with the king. This weapon, at first glance negligible and secret, became necessary when the legal situation was defined by the exclusive will of the monarch and the latter solved all problems according to the balance of power and not according to the law. On the other hand, the fact that the Jews lived in a climate of external hostility on the part of the people of the country, and were subject to discriminatory laws on the part of the government, made the protection of kings and princes a necessity. This protection ensured the internal autonomy of the Jewish communities and the physical existence of their members. In general, intervention took place as a reaction to hostilities against the Jews that had already been carried out, and in some cases to warn against them. The manner of intervention was always the same: the Arrabi-Mor came to court and presented the facts to the monarch, asking him to take the necessary steps. The monarch would accede to his requests to command an end of the hostilities or to order the fulfillment of the laws that prohibited and were meant to prevent such outbreaks.
When the number of members of the Jewish community in any part of the kingdom exceeded ten, they were compelled, at least in theory, to live in separate neigbourhoods called judarias, separated to some extent from the Christian population and guarded by the king's sentries, who limited their freedom of movement. This separation sometimes coincided with the Jews' own inclination to keep themselves separate for religious reasons. There are indications that in certain cases, the judarias were established voluntarily rather than imposed by the Christians. Inside the judarias religious and administrative life developed in full autonomy, with synagogues and schools, doctors of law, arrabis, preachers and chaplains.
Other restrictions on the liberty of the Jews were decreed after the kingdom was established. Jews were forbidden to occupy certain public offices and were humiliated by being forced to wear a badge sewn to their clothes. They suffered this discrimination under the pretence of preventing offence to the Christian population. But such requirements, as well as other restrictions, were not strictly observed, because the monarchs, at the request of the Arrabi-Mor and with some hesitation, in general adopted an attitude of relative tolerance towards their Jewish subjects.
By paying heavy tributes, the Jews of the kingdom enjoyed not only the protection of the monarch but also a relatively autonomous judicial and administrative status. Only in rare cases – mainly before an appeal court – were the Jews subject to the jurisdiction of Christian courts which had, however, to observe the Jewish Oral and Written Law at this stage of the trial. Initially the scope of the jurisdiction granted by the monarch to the Jewish judicial and administrative authorities varied greatly from time to time and from one community to another within the same period. Later, however, the private rights of the Jews were consolidated and codified in specific ordinances, which would become part of the above mentioned Codigo Afonsino as will be seen from the chronological explanation which follows.
After the death of the first king of
In the reign of D. Afonso II (1211-1223), some laws were passed which limited the freedom of the Jews. One of these laws banned the Jews from holding such public offices as were liable to upset the Christians. According to another law which was meant to encourage conversion to Christianity, no Jew had the right to disinherit his son as a result of his conversion. As mentioned above, such a convert was even entitled to receive in advance his part of the future inheritance during the lifetime of his parents.
D. Sancho II (1223-1248) provoked a hostile reaction of his clergy I by protecting the Jews and allowing them to take part in the administration of the state. His successor, D. Afonso III (1248-1279), also incurred serious disapproval by his ecclesiastical authorities for similar behaviour. It is known that in 1274 this king issued a law called Da comunidade dos judeus (On the Community of the Jews),[12] and that during his lifetime the arrabis judged civil cases involving Jews, whereas criminal offenses were judged by Christian judges, when one or even both sides were Jewish. D. Diniz I (1279-1325), the "farmer king", continued and extended the policy of tolerance towards his Jewish subjects, granting them privileges and mitigating the heavy tribute levied on them. This earned him more serious ecclesiastical disapproval than that addressed to his predecessors. At the beginning of his reign he even reached an agreement with the Jews of Braganza, promising them special protection. The Arrabi-Mor of his kingdom, D. Judah and his son and successor in this office, D. Guadelha, must have influenced the king in his inclination "to grant favour and mercy" to the Jews, according to the expression in use at the time. The monarch had a close relationship of collaboration and friendship with both these Jewish leaders, and gave them privileges, as a reward for important services rendered to the state, in the collection and administration of public rents.
In the year 1306, D. Judah built a lovely synagogue in the
old judaria of
D. Guadelha continued in office during the reign of D.
Afonso IV (1325-1357). But when this monarch came to the throne, the policy of
tolerance towards his Jewish subjects was changed. Pressed by the clergy, D.
Afonso IV decreed several laws against the alleged Jewish dominance in the
kingdom, and regulated with extreme strictness contracts suspected of being
usurious. His son and successor, D. Pedro I (1357-1367), nicknamed O
Justiceiro in the history of his people, also favoured the conservation of
the rights of the Jews and punished their persecutors in a strict and impartial
way. This king even mitigated the harshness of some laws issued during the
reign of his father. At the request of the Jews of Lisbon, he extended by a
special law of 1366 the deadline for entering the judarias at nightfall.
At the time, D. Moses Navarro was Arrabi-Mor of
During the troubled reign of D. Fernando (1367-1383),
which was marked by lack of success and by the war with
The proclaimed monarch, who started a new dynasty in
In 1392 the same king confirmed the bulls issued in 1347
and 1389 in which Pope Clement VI and Pope Boniface IX respectively recommended
to their faithful to behave properly towards the Jews. According to these
bulls, which had the force of law in
After the death of D. João, his son D.
After the death of D. Duarte, his six-year-old son, D. Afonso V, came to the throne (1438-1481). According to the above mentioned chronicler, Rui de Pina, the advice of Master Guadelha in relation to the position of the stars was taken into consideration for the coronation of D. Afonso V.[24] During his minority the king was replaced by his uncle D. Pedro, who in his capacity of regent published in 1446 the first Portuguese civil code, the Ordenações do Senhor Rei D. Afonso V. As noted above, all the legislation then applicable to the Jews was collected and reconfirmed in Livro II of these Ordenações. In spite of the fact that all the laws restricting the freedom of the Jews were officially confirmed in his code, D. Afonso was one of the kings who most favoured the Jews, and he protected them from the hatred of the fanatical mob. He had friendly relations with several contemporary Jewish scholars and admitted to the court as his counsellor and favourite the theologian and Bible commentator, D. Isaac Abravanel, the most famous personality of Portuguese Jewry. When the king passed away, Abravanel wrote a moving elegy in Hebrew.[25]
The son of D. Afonso, D. João II (1481-1495),
succeeded to the throne after his father's death and promptly entered into a
major struggle with the noblemen of the kingdom. The noblemen, led by the most
powerful noble of the time, the Duke of Braganza, who had secret contacts with
The drama of the Jews of Portugal reached its climax
during the reign of D. João's successor, D. Manuel (1495-1521). At the
beginning of his reign D. Manuel showed tolerance towards the Jews and even
restored to freedom those Jews whom his predecessor had turned into slaves.[27] The
distinguished Abraham Zacuth, one of the exiles from
On the other hand, the monarch wanted to marry the eldest
daughter of Fernando and Isabel of Aragon and
Faced with the dilemma of converting or leaving the
country, the majority of the Jews prepared to leave
The decree of expulsion therefore was not carried out. It
was issued only as an artifice to obtain by violence the conversion of all the
Jews of the kingdom. The years that preceded the conversion were remembered by
the Portuguese distinctively and characteristically as Tempo dos Judeus
("the time of the Jews") and were followed by the extinction and
prohibition of Judaism and by the violent conversion of its members, who were
suddenly transformed into New Christians. The expression "the time of the
Jews" was designed, by common usage and in documents, to refer to the period
between the establishment of the monarchy and this violent act by D. Manuel,
when the public existence of Jews was allowed in
In fact, half a century after the conversion, the famous
Seer of Trancoso, nicknamed Bandarra, stated that on one occasion, in the house
of the New Christian Manoel Alvares, the wife of the latter “said that in
the time of the Jews it was said that the Messiah would come." This
statement appears in the minutes of the lawsuit of the Lisbon Inquisition
against the Seer of Trancoso, dated 1541.[34] In
another document, dated 1540, it is also recorded that when the Inquisitors
were questioning another visionary, Luis Dias, the Messiah of Setubal, they had
asked him "if his father and mother had become Christians in the tempo
dos judeus (the Jewish period).”[35] The
same thing happened in
The New Christian Period
The
era of the New Christians started with the catastrophe of the violent
conversion that took place in 1497. For the Jews who had not succeeded in
leaving
Probably with the intention of easing the adaptation of the ex-Jews to their sudden change of status, D. Manuel granted them, by royal letter of May 1497, a period of twenty years during which their religious life would not be subject to ecclesiastical inquiry, so that they could live freely and without fear.[37] The letter was issued before the forced conversion, when the deadline for the Jews to leave the country as provided in the decree of expulsion had not yet expired. This proves that the author of the act of violence himself admitted that from the beginning he had no intention of enforcing the expulsion contained in the decree, and also that the converts would continue to be Jews, under the disguise of New Christians.
In any case, the days of calm promised by D. Manuel to the pseudo-converts for the period following their conversion never materialized. The angry mob charged the New Christians with the same medieval accusations that had previously been made against the Jews.
Driven by hatred resulting from religious intolerance and
economic rivalry, the anger reached its peak in April 1506 when thousands of
New Christians were massacred and all their belongings looted during a popular
uprising. It is true that the monarch gave orders to punish the killers and
appeared to be protecting the New Christians and as a reward even allowed them
for a certain period to leave the country freely.[38] But
several years later the king himself attempted to set up the tribunal of the
Inquisition, which was to be organized as in
D. Manuel died without achieving the establishment of the Holy Office in the kingdom, as he had requested from the pontiff through the Portuguese ambassador to the court at Rome, but his successor D. João III (1521-1557) did obtain the establishment of the Inquisition by means of a bull dated 1531, finally confirmed by another one dated 1536. From then on, all the New Christians were suspected of heresy. The first Monitorio (Monitor), of 1536, imposed on all the inhabitants of the kingdom the duty of coming forward to accuse suspects, and at the same time informed people of the signs whereby heretical acts could be identified; the first known Regimento (Statute), of 1552, finally established the norms and structure of the judiciary organization of the Holy Office in Portugal. Thus the sinister machine was assembled under the direction of the first Inquisitor-General, Frei Diogo da Silva, who was later replaced by I the cardinal-infante, D. Henrique.The Monitor and the Statute were written, or at least inspired, by Frei Diogo and D. Henrique respectively.
After the death of D. João III, and in view of the fact that his heir and grandson, D. Sebastião (1557-1578), was still a minor, the regency was first assumed by the grandmother, D. Catarina, and later by the above-mentioned cardinal, D. Henrique, Inquisitor-General and brother of the late king. During the regency, the persecutions against the New Christians increased considerably. After several years of regency, D. Sebastião himself took the throne. He was a fanatical and mystic king who needed the means for a war against the infidel Moors of Africa. In return for a huge sum of money received from the New Christians,[39] the king granted them some liberties, including making it easier for New Christians to leave the kingdom.
This had previously been forbidden by the king himself and by his predecessors. However, after the young king was lost in the battle against the Moors in Alcacer Quibir, cardinal D. Henrique (1578- 1580) succeeded to the throne once more and suspended the liberties Granted by the unfortunate D. Sebastião. During the reign of the Cardinal Inquisitor-General, an old and experienced persecutor of the New Christians, life In the kingdom became increasingly more unbearable for them.
In spite of all the great afflictions and sufferings
inflicted on the New Christians by the tribunal of the Holy Office, they did
not always lay their arms. Many succeeded, on various occasions in escaping
secretly and in forming communities of ex-Marranos in different countries in
Europe, in the
After the death of the cardinal, the kingdom lost its
independence and fell under Spanish rule. Felipe II of
During the reign of Felipe IV (1621-1640), the last
Spanish king to reign over
At first the king was inclined to accept the complaints of
the New Christians and even stopped some autos de fé announced in
The reigns of the three Felipes were characterized in
general by intense inquisitorial activities, including the extension of the
Inquisition to far-away
After the restoration of the monarchy in
At this time, Father Antonio Vieira made his appearance.
Vieira, who had arrived in
After the death of D. João IV the sequestrations were reestablished, albeit with some hesitations, by the regent Queen D. Luisa, during the minority of D. Afonso VI (1656-1668) at the demand of the Inquisitors. The persecutions against the New Christians were increased, hundreds of investigations took place, and many people were put to death in savage autos de fé. Against Antonio Vieira himself, counsellor and friend of the late king, the Inquisition instituted a long and humiliating lawsuit, using as a pretext a document in which the Jesuit and seer declared that the dead king would come to life again to fulfil on earth his messianic mission according to prophecies some of which were contained in the Old Testament.[44]
D. Afonso VI was overthrown by a coup d'état and
his brother, D. Pedro II (1668-1706), came to the throne. During his reign the
agitation against the New Christians reached frightening proportions. Supported
by Father Vieira, who had been released from prison in the meantime, the New
Christians took the initiative of requesting from
During the reigns of D. João V (1706-1750), the persecutions continued accompanied by violence, and the frequency of the autos de fé was increased and involved a larger number of victims. In one of the autos de fé, held in 1739, the dramatist Antonio José da Silva, nicknamed "the Jew," was killed.[47] At this time, however, the first concrete results of the growing violence appeared in the kingdom which was ruined, devastated, and depopulated, for the New Christian population was either behind bars in the prisons of the Holy Office or on the run to avoid imprisonment. Some liberal patriots, leading personalities in contemporary science and diplomacy, like D. Antonio Ribeiro Sanches, a renowned physician, and D. Luis da Cunha,[48] an ambassador to several Courts in Europe, started timidly to point out the disadvantages of the inquisitorial system of continuous persecution, which had divided the country's population into two castes: New and Old Christians. The economic ruin caused by the Inquisition was their main argument.
During the reign of D. José I (1750-1777), the minister Marques de Pombal, probably inspired by the liberal ideas of his time, made the Inquisition submit to the power of the state, and turned it into an ordinary royal tribunal. By a law of May 25, 1773, Pombal also abolished the difference between New and Old Christians, thus restoring the unity of the Portuguese nation. A year later, in 1774, the new and last Regimento (Statute) of the Inquisition was published, mitigating and liberalizing the strictness of the previous regulations, now the subject of hard criticism. But only in the year 1821, following the victory of the liberal revolution of 1820, did the Cortes Gerais decree that the tribunal of the Holy Office be abolished. At the same time, the buildings where the Inquisition had operated were opened to the public and their deadly dungeons destroyed. These were the dungeons which for three centuries had inspired dread and fear. At the same time, the Cortes declared in a different decree that "consequently not only the descendants of the families expelled but all the Jews, wherever they live, may, if they so wished, return to Portugal without any fear and, on the contrary, with full security.”[49]
Modern Portugal
The
tribunal of the Holy Office had used its powers in a despotic way, first on
ecclesiatical authority and later on royal authority, until the decree of the Cortes
Gerais of the Portuguese nation, dated March 31, 1821, which abolished it.
Following the law of 1773, which had abolished the difference between Old and
New Christians, the latter penetrated Christian society more easily and became
assimilated. Furthermore, there was no lack of evil men who accused the New
Christians of having subdued Portuguese civilization in order to replace it by
a Semitic one by means of racial crossbreedings. Thus
Moreover, apart from the large number of former Portuguese Jews who were rich and sought refuge in more tolerant lands in different periods, there were others, the poor, who lacked the means to emigrate and clandestinely kept some semblance of Jewish traditions. This in spite of the great danger to which they exposed themselves. In fact, during the first decades of the 20th century, secret and semisecret concentrations of New Christians were discovered, especially in the cities and counties of the provinces of Tras-os-Montes and Beiras. These New Christians had continued to practice, as they do to this day, a domestic impoverished Judaism.[51] Initial attempts to bring them back to the fold yielded poor results and were not continued, except in a very limited way.
On the other hand, judging by the Hebrew tombstones known
in
It should be added that, apart from those first and
isolated immigrants, Jewish families of different origins started to settle in
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